Marjorie Liu » Bloghttp://marjoriemliu.com
Sat, 28 Feb 2015 15:54:52 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1Tokyo Food Porn: Part 2http://marjoriemliu.com/tokyo-food-porn-part-2/
http://marjoriemliu.com/tokyo-food-porn-part-2/#commentsSat, 28 Feb 2015 15:54:05 +0000http://marjoriemliu.com/?p=7010read more]]>A full week has officially passed since we landed in Tokyo, and it’s mostly been spent working on Monstress. Still, a girl has to eat. Here are the best three meals of the last couple days, in order of consumption:

Sapporo Dominica

Best. Soup. Curry. Ever. That’s all you really need to know about this small upstairs restaurant in Ginza. This was our second time at Dominica — we found it on the last day of our last trip — last year — and haven’t stopped talking about it since. Being food nerds, we made sure to get there five minutes before the doors opened (we remembered the line we faced before).

For those wondering, soup curry is a richer-than-average broth with as much spice as you can handle (or not). It comes with a side order of saffron rice, which is delicious on its own, or mixed in with the soup. I had the original chicken (melt off the bone), but there’s a version with a hamburger patty, which is also hands-down delicious.

It’s a small spot, and like I said, there can be a line if you don’t arrive early. It’s worth the wait, though. Here’s the official website, and the address is: M Ginza Bldg. 2F, 3-4-1 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo. If you’re taking the train: Kyobashi Station (Ginza line), exit 3.

Usagi

We met some dear friends here on a cold rainy night, right around the corner from Harajuku. It’s another small restaurant with amazing okonomiyaki: a savory “pancake” filled with everything from veggies, batter, seafood, meat, eggs, etc. I’ve had more versions than I can count — from Hiroshima to Tokyo to Berlin — and each one is different, regionally specific, and delicious. It’s a comfort food for me, right up there with dumplings and pie, and the problem generally is that I tend to eat myself into an okonomiyakicoma.

Usagi has other specialties, too. Yaki-onigiri (the grilled rice ball pictured below, which in this case was packed with fish…amazing, amazing); grilled veggies, steak, tofu with yam (we also said, “huh?”, but it was good); and more. If you go, don’t forget dessert: a pancake wrapped around a sweet red bean paste and dusted in chocolate powder. Aiyeeee.

I can’t find their address, but here’s a website in Japanese. To be honest, this is a place that might require a native speaker (we were with local friends). I’m not saying you shouldn’t try coming in, but it’s just a heads up.

Tofu steak covered in a yam pancake. Yes, it was delicious.

Last up, we have Akira:

We discovered Akira last year when we read a review about their chicken sashimi. I was leery at first (some might say that’s an understatement), but we finally went — and it was, of course, delectable. Japan is the only country in the world where I’ll eat raw chicken, happily. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of the chicken tartar (I dove right in), but pictured below is the fried chicken skin (excellent) and the grilled goodies.

Reservations are highly recommended; the restaurant is located along the canal that runs through Nakameguro, and is only a five minute walk (if that) from the station. They do have an English menu, too. Here’s their address: 1-10-23 Naka-Meguro, Meguro-ku, Tokyo (Ph: 03-3793-0051)

That’s it, for now! Back to the comic book!

]]>http://marjoriemliu.com/tokyo-food-porn-part-2/feed/0Tokyo: Eatshttp://marjoriemliu.com/tokyo-eats/
http://marjoriemliu.com/tokyo-eats/#commentsWed, 25 Feb 2015 13:44:22 +0000http://marjoriemliu.com/?p=7002read more]]>I’m not saying I’ll blog every day about this trip to Tokyo, but there are some things I’d like to talk about that can’t fit into 140 characters — such as food, for example.

I like to eat. More importantly, I need to stay fed or else…bad things start to happen. Low blood sugar is not a good look on me. Fortunately, Japan is the one country in the world where it’s impossible to go two steps without there being food for sale. I’m not exaggerating, either. Food is everywhere here.

Of course, I failed to mention the most crucial piece of information: specifically, where I got that burger. I wasn’t trying to be a deliberate tease — it’s just that I still had ‘burger head’. It’s impossible to focus when all I want to do is salivate over a second slab of meat.

So here, let me fix my oversight: the burger joint is called Fellows, and it’s located in trendy, hip, Omotesando. It’s probably the most adorable spot ever to chow down on a burger, as you can see below:

I mean, really. I totally want to live there.

Cute factor aside, however, the burger really is phenomenal. The bun collapses, and it’s got a crispness to it that’s super tasty. People always forget the importance of a good bun when rating a burger — but this one is supreme. Juicy patty, too — a ton of avocado (my favorite topping on a burger) — and fresh lettuce, tomatoes, etc. Delicious, all the way through.

We found the place by accident last year, when wandering down a side street near the gallery our dear family friend owns. Took one look at that sign, and were too curious not to give it a try. We are so glad we did.

Now, that was lunch. The afternoon consisted of a gorgeous walk, followed by dinner at Warayakiya in Roppongi (they have another larger spot in Akasaka). This place was discovered last year when a friend brought us — and we just never stopped going. Warayakiya specializes in cooking with straw, which apparently burns at temperatures of up 900 degrees. Hot, hot, hot.

Here’s what it looks like:

Highly recommended. Take a seat at the bar and feel the heat of that fire on you while you taste that delicious, scrumptious, chicken.

More tomorrow!

]]>http://marjoriemliu.com/tokyo-eats/feed/0Appearances: Boskone & MIThttp://marjoriemliu.com/appearances-boskone-mit/
http://marjoriemliu.com/appearances-boskone-mit/#commentsSun, 08 Feb 2015 02:18:44 +0000http://marjoriemliu.com/?p=6996read more]]>I’ve lived in Boston for four years, and have never attended Boskone. The timing was always off — either I’d be out of town, or…well, out of town.

But this year it’s different! I’ll be signing and reading from one of my novels, and participating in two panels — one on superheroes, and the other on women in comics. Also, I have another event this week on February 12th — over at MIT I’ll be in conversation with Bobbie Chase, Editorial Director of DC Comics. The public is welcome to attend. Here are the details:

Join Bobbie Chase, Editorial Director of DC Comics, and comic book writer, Marjorie Liu (Monstress, Astonishing X-Men, Black Widow), as they discuss the current and future state of the comic book medium, including DC and Marvel’s place in the industry, and how creator owned projects are helping to evolve the face of publishing.

MIT Building 4, Room 231February 12 - 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm

And here’s my schedule for Boskone!

Are We Living in the Superhero Renaissance?Saturday 10:00 – 10:50, Harbor III (Westin)
Marvel and DC heroes and heroines keep ka-powing at us from every screen and page, reviving the comics industry along the way. Why is the superhero biz suddenly so mega-ultra super? Why is this kind of storytelling so compelling? Is it just the special effects — or do we yearn for superheroes to save us from ourselves? Or from something else?
(Carrie Vaughn, Jack M. Haringa, Daniel M. Kimmel, Marjorie Liu, Marshall Ryan Maresca)

I took the stage at Image Expo to discuss my new creator-owned title, MONSTRESS, which I’m working on with Sana Takeda (who is brilliant and kicking ass). I gave an extensive interview at Newsarama, so check that out — but in short, it’s a privilege and honor to be creating this book with her at Image, where we can finally stretch our wings. We’ve also got Rus Wooton on letters and design, and editing is being handled by Jennifer Smith, my former assistant editor at Marvel.

I’ll be writing more about Monstress, but in the meantime, here’s a full rundown of all the art we showed at the release — and it’ll give you a hint of what’s in store for readers this summer.

“Monstress is about an outsider, a young woman who belongs nowhere; it is about young women who fight, who tame, who are consumed—and who become monsters in their own right,” said Liu. “I wanted to tell a story that encompasses all these things, and more. A story about women, young and old, picking up the pieces after surviving the horrors of war—and finding a home for themselves in a world that has otherwise exploited them. Set in an alternate history to our own, where immense Cloverfield-like monstrosities have conquered half the planet, and spanning the steppes of a shattered Asia, to the destroyed heart of a fallen Europe, Monstress is an epic adventure of frontiers and empires, and the rise of a young woman warrior, whose power may either doom or redeem the planet.”

]]>http://marjoriemliu.com/monstress/feed/7VONAhttp://marjoriemliu.com/vona-2/
http://marjoriemliu.com/vona-2/#commentsMon, 05 Jan 2015 16:25:08 +0000http://marjoriemliu.com/?p=6981read more]]>If you had asked me ten years ago — or even a couple years ago — whether I could ever see myself teaching I would have said, “No way.” I didn’t think I was cut out for it. But I began to realize that for those same ten years I’d been poo-pooing my ability to talk coherently about writing, I’d been doing just that: discussing process, structure, character, and more; on panels, in interviews, on this blog, to other writers. So when I was invited to teach a some masterclasses at various literary festivals and conventions, I didn’t say no. When I was asked to teach a writing workshop at the MFA program at Stonecoast, I dove in. And guess what? I really enjoyed teaching. More like, I loved it. And after teaching at VONA and MIT, I love it even more.

Speaking of VONA, it’s that time of year again. The program is open for applications, and will be until March 15th. For those who aren’t familiar with it, VONA/Voices is “the only multi-genre workshop for writers of color in the nation…The mission of VONA is to develop emerging writers of color through programs and workshops taught by established writers of color.”

This year (and for the foreseeable future) VONA will take place at the University of Miami, and the amazing faculty (Junot Diaz, David Mura, Tananarive Due, and more) represent multiple genres that range from fiction, playwriting, memoir, to poetry. I myself teach a week-long workshop on Popular Fiction, where we cover all the sub-genres of Romance, Mystery, Urban Fantasy, YA, and more.

If you’re a writer of color, and you’ve got a week in June to spare, take a chance on VONA. It’s an important program, but it’s also a place where writers can find their voices and take chances in a safe environment.

]]>http://marjoriemliu.com/vona-2/feed/0Character: Dialoguehttp://marjoriemliu.com/character-dialogue/
http://marjoriemliu.com/character-dialogue/#commentsFri, 02 Jan 2015 18:30:12 +0000http://marjoriemliu.com/?p=6975read more]]>I’m writing a new comic (which I’ll finally be able to discuss next week after the announcement at Image Expo) and this early in the work I’m still learning the voices of my characters. Some of them are emerging full-born, chatty and easy — others, I’m having to tease and tweak, and experiment with. It’s fine, either way. I enjoy this part of the process. But it has reminded me again of the differences between writing comics and novels.

Good dialogue always matters. Always, always. But let’s say that writing dialogue isn’t your strength. Okay, that’s fine. In novels you can sometimes camouflage bad dialogue. Or even limit the amount of dialogue you’ve got through the work of engaging a character’s interior life. There’s always a work-around. It’s not easy, but you can do it. Where you’re weak in one area of prose, you’ll hopefully be strong in another.

I don’t think that’s actually possible in comics. Dialogue stands out in its isolation. There’s no prose, no descriptive cushion. Just the art — and your words. Words that are specific to characters. Words that are conversations. Words that sometimes provide narration. You may craft a gorgeous script, but the dialogue is all that the reader will ever see.

There’s also the extra burden of limited space. In a typical comic, panels aren’t large enough to accommodate a huge amount of talking. Conversations have to be succinct, and should accomplish a couple things at once: imparting information, but also character (i.e. think about how personality is revealed through the way someone speaks, through the words used, to the rhythm, to the body language).

It’s not easy. Or rather, some characters make it easy. But we’re not always that lucky. So what’s the solution? In my case, nothing more than continued revision, speaking lines out loud, rearranging conversations, re-imagining characters. Playing until it feels right. And sometimes it’s never going to feel right, and I just have to own that fact, and keep it moving.

This is also my strategy while writing novels, but the pressure feels a bit different. The lines in comics are just so much more exposed.

Anyway, that’s what I’m wrestling with right now. A lot of moving pieces, and all of them are words.

]]>http://marjoriemliu.com/character-dialogue/feed/12014 via Instragramhttp://marjoriemliu.com/2014-via-instragram/
http://marjoriemliu.com/2014-via-instragram/#commentsTue, 30 Dec 2014 15:17:38 +0000http://marjoriemliu.com/?p=6968read more]]>It’s hard to sum up a year — so much happens, so much that’s small and lovely and difficult and beautiful — but moments get captured, nonetheless. At least, those moments I choose to share. Very few of the photographs I take end up on Instagram. What people usually see are cats, food, sunsets, snippets of my life here and there. It’s not entirely representative of who I am, but there’s a definite theme that’s all me, and all true.

]]>http://marjoriemliu.com/2014-via-instragram/feed/2Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!http://marjoriemliu.com/merry-christmas-happy-holidays-2/
http://marjoriemliu.com/merry-christmas-happy-holidays-2/#commentsThu, 25 Dec 2014 14:54:39 +0000http://marjoriemliu.com/?p=6964
]]>http://marjoriemliu.com/merry-christmas-happy-holidays-2/feed/0The Immersion Factor: Comics + Novelshttp://marjoriemliu.com/the-immersion-factor-comics-novels/
http://marjoriemliu.com/the-immersion-factor-comics-novels/#commentsWed, 24 Dec 2014 00:27:18 +0000http://marjoriemliu.com/?p=6960read more]]>I wrote part of my new comic book this morning, and after lunch switched gears to the novel. This is something I’ve been doing for years — and I don’t usually give it much thought. I’m a visual storyteller, and the language of visual storytelling doesn’t change that much, from one medium to another.

Well, that’s not quite true, actually. But that’s also not really the focus of this post.

Instead, I started thinking about how it feels to switch gears. How it feels to write a novel compared to a comic. The difference inside my head is tangible, physical, as if one is silk and the other is cashmere. I can almost touch it.

Now, that’s just me. But I’d argue there’s a more universal shift that happens for anyone who writes in two different mediums. Creating a deeply immersive experience for a reader requires deep immersion for the writer. It just does. You have to be fully in — in the characters, in the world, in the conflict.

But the type of immersion changes from novels to comics. Writing a novel means that you, the creator, are solely responsible for making people and worlds that readers can believe in and empathize with — and your only way of doing this is with your words. That’s it. Your words are the building blocks, your words are your tools. You, and you alone accomplish this. So when I say, for example, that I become immersed in the book I’m writing — you better believe I am all in. In ways that I find difficult to describe, because I’m really somewhere else, out of body. I have to be, in order to craft those words into something more than just letters on a page.

Writing a comic require another kind of immersion — equally strong, just as intense — but different. Because here’s the thing — you are not alone when you write a comic (well, unless you’re both artist and writer, in which case my hat is off to you). And the script you write? A reader will likely never see it. You write that script for your artist. Your artist and your editor, your colorist, your letterer. Just a handful of people in all the world. You tell a story that will be interpreted and brought to life by another. You and the artist create a world together, and even though your words might set the framework, at the end of the day that’s where the artist does her magic and brings these things to life.

I am fully immersed when I write comics — I am in that world, in the heads of the characters — but because what’s needed of me isn’t completely reliant on the strength of my prose (unlike in a novel), the texture of my work and my focus changes. I’m focusing on moments within scenes, scenes within parts, parts within arcs — visual cues, dialogue, the importance of a look — and how all these things build and build within a serialized format to make a whole story, over time. It’s the same as when I write a novel — but again, different.

Different muscles. Different mental textures. Different and the same.

]]>http://marjoriemliu.com/the-immersion-factor-comics-novels/feed/0Christmas Panichttp://marjoriemliu.com/christmas-panic/
http://marjoriemliu.com/christmas-panic/#commentsFri, 19 Dec 2014 20:08:52 +0000http://marjoriemliu.com/?p=6943read more]]>On Monday someone reminded me that Christmas is next week, and I think I might have sunk to my knees and let out a primal wail.

I love Christmas. After Halloween, it’s my favorite holiday. But I’m always caught off-guard, I’m never able to quite get the decorations up, gifts are last minute (sorry to friends and family who are reading this), and then it just seems to happen so darn fast. There’s not even time to take in the music.

Oh, well. As I learned watching Christmas movies all throughout my childhood, it’s the spirit that counts — and the Christmas spirit is something we should carry with us every day. Along with pie, adorable cat ornaments, and Burl Ives singing Frosty the Snowman.

I am going to cook, though. I may not have the Christmas tree up, but man, I’m going to get in that kitchen and whip up a feast. The menu is all planned, totally nontraditional — and, keeping some of our guests in mind — mostly vegan. Mostly. Because I gots to have my meats.

What are your favorite foods, or things to do at Christmas? If you’ve got recipes, post them in the comments!

***

I didn’t talk about it at all over the last three months, but I’ve been teaching comic book writing at MIT — a class full of undergraduates, throwing themselves into the mix. What great students. One of them interviewed me post-semester, and wrote a very kind review of the class that you can find here.